


this is not romance (but romantic is the color of my blood on your tongue)

by judascore



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Abduction, Abuse, Begging, Bisexual Female Character, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Body Modification, Breeding, Cannibalism, Cock Warming, Crying, Dark, Dark Web, Death in Childbirth, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub Undertones, Emotional Manipulation, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Feeding, Filth tbh, Finger Sucking, Fingerfucking, Forced Masturbation, Forced Orgasm, Gore, Guro, Hand Feeding, Horror-Thriller, Idée Fixe, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Infanticide, Innocence, Kidnapping, Knifeplay, Loss of Limbs, Loss of Virginity, Masochism, Murder, Mutilation, Necrophilia, Non-Consensual Bondage, Obsession, Obsessive Behavior, Omorashi, Oral Fixation, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Praise Kink, Psychological Horror, Punishment, Pure Filth(tm), Rape/Non-con Elements, Rough Oral Sex, Roughness, Sadism, Slut Shaming, Spit Kink, Stockholm Syndrome, Tears, Torture, Unhealthy Relationships, Violence, of sorts, small age difference
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:28:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26727454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/judascore/pseuds/judascore
Summary: Upon becoming the object of attention of a man she knows, inexpert orphan Bloom is thrust headfirst into a perilous world in which she is subjected to horrors greater than she could ever have imagined.So, with nothing but the limited amount of time her body can persevere and an unfortunate yet wholly inevitable attraction to her captor, the young girl knows the decision she has to make will be an arduous one: she must either learn to come to terms with the fact that her life is no longer her own, or risk it all to reclaim it.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	1. so jung, so unschuldig

The owner of Moe’s Diner, a quaint little thing in one of the lesser prestigious neighborhoods in town, was a burly beast of a man with a round belly and fine brown hair that was always combed to faultlessness, right across the bald area on the back of his head. With a pair of spectacles that rested slightly crooked atop his freckled nose and a slightly greying upward mustache, many took it that his name ought to be Maurice or Melvin and that he must have been the archetypal soft-spoken, omniscient, all-round grandfather with a penchant for light reading and tending to his garden. 

The contrary was true.

Herself so very delicate and perhaps even foolishly, prematurely naïve at eighteen years old, but a few hopscotches away from nineteen, Bloom was and always had been a girl who weighed each and every word she spoke with great attention—her mouth was something like that of a cat. (The little things, that didn't really matter, that had little to no effect, she let go of, while that what was significant she quickly learned to swallow down.) But even she, who had no enemies and even tried to empathize with those whose company she did not particularly enjoy, found Martin Neubauer, father of two and lover to the same number, to be a horrible person. 

He was unkind to personnel and regulars alike, hissing in his mother tongue like they wronged him, untrue to wife, kids and mistress and—for lack of better word—downright creepy. Bloom had hardly slept after seeing just how brightly his eyes shimmered when this group of short-skirted middle-school girls came by to feast on fries and strawberry-red milkshakes together during the midday break, leaving behind little peals of girlish laughter and the scent of discounted drugstore perfume. 

_So jung, so unschuldig. Sie wissen noch nichts darüber, wie das Leben sie beflecken wird_ , he’d said. Bloom lacked fluency in German, sure, but she was familiar enough with the Dutch language (her foster father's) to piece together some of it. 

Martin Neubauer, however, was not holed up in his office—nor offering the girls working unfortunate remarks—that evening.

No one dared guess whether he was with his wife and children, eating dinner in their picket-fenced, three-story suburban home, or otherwise entertaining his mistress in some cheap motel bedroom, but for certain was one thing: the evening ahead of them, in his absence, would undoubtedly be an unhurried—if not unusually peaceful—one. In all of a fool’s fairness, though, even when Martin was around, Bloom’s shifts, however long they were, were uncharacteristically uneventful. Moe’s had seen better days. Matters had worsened considerably since the moment its owner had openly expressed his interest in a new big project that required the confiscation of a handful of houses and the demolition some small chapel built a great many years ago by one of the founders of the town (pious despite this, though, Martin attended church each week in the company of his household). People began to stay away because of this. Some out of contempt. Others out of solidarity with those who were at risk of losing their home. Went to Sparky’s or Chez Mariella for their waffles and pancakes. 

It’d briefly made her worry about her job. In spite of her employer’s occasional outbursts and the insolent patrons she was to endure, the overtime she dutifully put in without hesitation and the little gratitude shown to her in retribution, her work as a waitress paid for all of her primary needs and even allowed her to save some cash on the side for small gifts for her siblings. Seldom for herself.

Truthfully, she needed this job. _Badly_.

Kids like her, kids that belonged to the government, weren't handed the same luxuries other children were. Things had been different once, when her dad—and her dad alone, because her mom, who she knew only from pictures, who had died giving birth—was still with her, but since he’d gone away without a word, without a note left on the counter to bid his only child farewell when she was at the tail’s end of nine years old, the truth of it was that she had no one to rely on, to trust, but herself. She went from baby fat cheeks to preteen skin between being placed in an eight-piece family with at its head a domineering father and a mother too insecure to bite back, planted in the closest public schools and given the lowest plan as covered by their healthcare system. Those who were responsible, sitting in their custom fitted suits and designer armchairs, could not have cared less for the child’s feelings. Perhaps they didn’t consider them, or simply _her_ , worth the effort.

Bloom had always been but a puny petal of a flower, and life a furious stream of water that obliged her to drift along, taking her places far and so terribly unfamiliar. However much she enjoyed retreating, however much she enjoyed the calm she was only seldom blessed with, the chittering of the cicadas and the sight of the stars, all she could do was wait and see as she went with the savage waves. Life was known to be a fickle thing.

Such reflections were fruitless, of course. 

... Him.

The diner was all but vacated when an all too familiar individual walked through the double doors. 

Bloom knew him. 

Maybe 'knew' was an overestimation for what was there between the two of them. There was only the vague flutter of recognition, for she had seen him a few times before. Had gone up to him as was expected from her and taken his order thrice. Had memorized his order, too: a cup of black coffee, no cream, no sugar, and a single slice of artisan apple pie (made lovingly by street-old chef Marian, who was a little senile and had cataract but was still a very, very talented cook). Bloom had remembered by a fault because he would ask time and time again for extra cinnamon to be dusted on top of the pastry. 

The first time she saw him, he'd been wearing a hoodie and sweatpants astrew with holes she assumed he was too careless to have fixed. She'd almost missed him. It wasn’t hard to do so. Moe’s was the perfect place to be overlooked.

It had been early in the evening, half an hour after six o’clock mass, which meant that the diner was bustling with life, too. A single young couple sat at the back and a few families, dressed in their best Sunday clothes, were hurrying to find a seat of their own when a slight commotion stirred between two tables, not too far from his. Then there were low whispers, wide eyes, some poorly concealed grins and laughter. Curious, the young man had frowned from his seat, nearly bending his neck out of shape to see what’d transpired. 

Deem it divine intervention or grave misfortune, but there, he found her, a poorly looking girl with rough, dark-brown hair—tied together inexpertly, like she had allowed a child to do it, with baby-blue ribbons—who’d managed to stumble somehow, legs gone fuddled, face-first on the floor (and he, heart-first into love). She was red as a rose (and twice as lovely) as she picked herself up off the dusty flooring, endearingly uncoordinated, and brushed at the stray hairs that covered her eyes. With wet lashes, flushed cheeks and a single mole below her right eye, she’d shown him a face that could turn a scholar into a sucker in a single breath’s time. 

She’d shown him a face to fall in love with.

The girls working, in turn, were in unanimous agreement that he was strange. Unusual. Bloom told them it shouldn’t be an issue to be odd. 

Still, she’d failed to explicitly admit, she, too, thought he was a curious young man.

Maybe it was the way he simply sat there, quiet, alone, folding his hands atop the table and blinking dollishly. Watching. Waiting. Or maybe, all in all, it was the contract between the softness of his light, long hair, falling about his head like a shawl of snow, and the sharpness of his eyes that had them turning their heads when he passed them by. He was lovely, sure, despite the pallor of his skin and the ripped seams of his attire, but never lovely like the kind of movie stars the girls fawned about whensoever they were unoccupied, when the diner’s tv, perched up high against one of the walls, was playing some 90’s show made for preteens, all Golden Retriever smiles, fishing trips and Republican families, but a strange kind of pretty. 

This one was made of finer things. He was striking in a way that didn’t shine but instead sickened. 

Tonight, as Bloom found her way among the tables that night, she immediately caught him sitting where he always did, by the window. This was not so unusual: clientele often—nearly always—returned to the precise spot they’d chosen before. It was something about creatures of habit, she guessed. Habits, all in all, were what kept this little town running and what was bound to be its collapse one day. The monochromacy both offered the people here comfort, certitude, a ‘good’ life between getting up, working hard, saving up and spending to feed the pigs on top, and drove them away or out of their minds.

Maybe one day she, too, would lead a good life. A life her mother would have wanted for her. A modest but welcoming townhouse. A pet dog or kitten named after her mama, Irene. Maybe even someone to keep her warm when the hearth fire or the heater stopped working--girl or boy, that mattered little to her. Maybe.

Until then, day by day.

Until then, there was only Moe’s Diner.

By now the young man—furthermore nameless—had settled down and seemed to have brought with him for the very first time something to occupy himself with. It was a book. She knew the one. She had not (yet) read it herself, but she'd seen it before, among the stack of old novels that her foster father left lying around as though they had no value. She regretted that. As such, when he was in bed or while he was watching the news, she would occasionally bring one with her to her room for reading. At one point, she’d read Pale Fire front to back thrice.

She couldn’t help but ask. “Truman Capote?” 

The young man glanced to his book, then back to her, smiling sickly sweet. 

Under his gaze her ears went rosy. The color spread, crawling from the bridge of her nose to the apples of her cheeks. “In Cold Blood, Truman Capote. You’re right. Have you read it, too?”

With a smile on her lips, she shook her head, left to right, and her hair moved with. “Not yet.”

“You should.” He spoke, cracking his knuckles. Tilted his head, then. She looked a little different. Breathtaking as ever, though, even with a mouth rung with stolen cookie crumbs and dressed in an unflattering uniform and apron. “You dyed your hair.”

“I did.” Eyes focusing for a moment on the dull artwork lined up on the walls, she sighed. A distraction from his stare, to be sure, while her fingers ran through the two sections of her hair that brushed at her forehead. They stayed there for a little while. She’d bleached the front, so had even Amelia—furthermore somewhat nonchalant, distracted—noticed immediately. It was a subtle change, one she was markedly still unsure of, but enough a change, apparently, for his eyes to pick up on. 

It caught her off guard. “I… uh, wanted something else for a little. Got tired of always looking the same.”

“It looks pretty.” He told her, not a breath wasted on the hesitation one would expect from a stranger. 

Didn’t stop there, not easily deterred. “ _You’re pretty_.”

Bloom’s thoughts went spidered in a messy tangle and her eyes grew wide at the compliment, lips curving heavenward in awed appreciation. She was stunned. It wasn’t often she received attention like this, or at least not so openly. There were men that stared, of course, men that subtly tried to cop a feel when they took her kindness for attention, but never more. 

“Oh, t-thanks! I didn’t… I wasn’t sure. Still not entirely used to it, is all.” Reddening once more, from smallest toe to the forehead, she nearly covered her face with her hands. 

And then she felt the eyes of Lauren—one of the girls, long-legged and all woman and wonder at twenty-five; with dreams of being a starlet and debts racked up to the ceiling—glued on her back, and then a reminder, a heavy, sinking feeling at the pit of her stomach, athe end of a moment. Of an uptick of the beat of her heart she knew was foolish. All the color drew from her face as she stumbled with the notebook she kept in one of the pockets in her dress. “Anyhow, how can I be of service to you? The… the usual?”

Her voice came out too stupidly. Too rushed. Nothing like the tone she’d taken on before, flinch to her tongue and meek and mild and everything he’d dreamt of. If he’d suspected nothing of her caution before, he surely would have caught it now.

He did.

“The usual will do.”

The dream-girl, girl-child, altogether lost cause bobbed her head twice, putting back the book she’d materialized from her dress. There was the hint of a smile, if still forged, to her mouth. “I’ll be right back with you. Thanks for coming back to Moe’s!”

And Bloom left it at that. There was nothing else she could say to him.

She returned to the counter and Lauren and Amelia awaited her there, sitting idly and chattering away about topics she knew nothing of… niche tv-shows, celebrities who’d become zealous topics of gossip among their peers, nightly antics that bordered blasphemy, which they enthused about in great detail. Too often, she only pretended to understand their broad framework of terms and ideas, laughing with the practiced spontaneity of a lady companion. 

Lauren and Amelia were a different breed of girl. A breed she couldn’t consistently relate to. They were sweet, smiling people who lived in warm homes with loving parents instead of faded outside walls and hollowness. Bloom didn’t belong, really. 

Still, they treated her like she did. Like a lifelong friend. She wanted to believe they liked her, and that that was why they’d welcomed her with open arms when she came in looking for a job, fresh out of highschool old but no work experience young, but it just as well might’ve been pity they were showing her. So she knew.

(And so it was.)

“You gonna go out with him, or something? Bar hopping together?” Amelia, five-foot-one and proud, smirked ear to ear, laughing a beat later. Her fingers reached for the radio, turning up the volume. Frank Sinatra. Not Lauren’s favorite, and noticeably so. “Or maybe—"

Bloom visibly bristled. “Of--of course not! _Absolutely_ not!”

Not even if she wasn’t working. Not even if he’d asked her. Not in a million years.

"Okay, okay, no need to yell! Better that way, anyway. He's kind of..."

"You can say it, Mel. You think he's _weird_."

Amelia and Lauren had indeed always thought he was that little bit too friendly. He was kind to everyone, to be sure, but more so when it came to her. To her. Spoke with her with an… intensity to his demeanor and voice that did not quite unsettle her but made her go bug-eyed wary despite herself. So why, the two girls had wondered aloud, if he was so friendly, was he always alone? Where were his friends? 

"As if you don't think it's strange that—"

“Hey, Bloom.” Lauren’s voice was soft as she interrupted, and from the clink of porcelain Bloom could tell she was going to make coffee. Frowning, Amelia chimed in and asked for a mug of her own, an attempt Lauren waved away with a dismissive hand (“ _That’s what you get for playing Gaye, bitch!_ ”). “Would you mind opening up tomorrow morning? I’d owe you one. A _big_ one.”

“ _Actually_ ,” hesitation. A deep sigh, then. Of course. “Sure, okay. You didn’t need to ask.”

Later, around quarter past eleven and well after Moe’s had been closed down and locked up for the night, after Lauren had taken care of bathroom cleanup (the shortest straw to draw, really) and Bloom had tended to the front of the diner alone as Amelia’d sweet-talked her way out, mopping the floors and cleaning the tables, she walked home. Amelia, as aforementioned, had left a little while before, in the rackety looking truck she'd gotten as a gift from mom and dad for her twentieth birthday, smiling wide and happy and waving wildly from the driver’s seat. Lauren drove a pretty, pristine white bike with fake flowers in and cute stickers on the small, woven basket.

The night was tranquil and dusky, the moon kept company only by faint birdsong and the bite of the wind at her legs. (It reminded her that tomorrow she would best wear a pair of leggings or thick stockings under her dress uniform. At times she forgot to do so, and then she would tremble like a leaf underway to her home, holding her knitted cardigan tighter to her form with some belief it would make her teeth stop clattering.) The shadows that the streetlights cast on the cement were there as they were every night, but Bloom tried to disregard them. At nighttime things looked different from their real appearance. Distorted. Scary.

She began to walk faster.

Footsteps behind her were what impelled her to do so. They might have come from the left or from the right. It might have been nothing, just as well, but the thrashing of her heart, akin to the beating of a bird's wings about a cage, set her off. She was panicking--of course, she was panicking.

She simply had to keep going, at an even pace, and then all would be well. She had learned it that way. Had read somewhere to keep her keys in her hand, sharp edge between pointer and middle finger, in case of emergency, and to keep her breathing in check. There was no time, there was no room, for routine. For pleasantries. No time to look at the properties, dwellings, she was passing by as she did each night, to fantasize about a worry-free existence of her own within one of them. The footsteps were starting to draw closer and closer. Too close.

_She was panicking, she was panicking, she was panicking._

At the end of the street, though, there was a small pub, she remembered. Nothing impressive, that place, but invariably packed. That was where she had to go. That was the point she needed to reach. The finishing line, if you will. There she would stay for a while, until she was feeling relaxed again, and if she dared, then she could even call home. If she was lucky, her dad might have been in a good mood and could come and get her.

A gnawing feeling began in the pit of her stomach. “ _Please, please, please_ …”

A whisper, a plea.

But it was too late.

Something sharp, something heavy. A sudden surge of vertigo bore her to the pavement, wet and filthy against her cheek. She felt like she was going to vomit. She might have. She wouldn’t have been able to tell.

“I thought you’d make it a little harder, with how incredibly prudent you are.” A voice—so familiar, and yet so hauntingly different—purred. “But thanks so much for the help, sweetheart.”  
And as darkness closed in around her, claiming her consciousness, the last thing she saw was the dirty, black sole of a boot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... life can be so cruel, and it's only the start for poor bloom.  
> german-eng translation: _so young, so innocent. they do not yet know how life will taint them_.
> 
> if you feel like it, leave some feedback or a quick comment. i'm looking forward to hearing from you!


	2. on gut feelings, guardian angels

When Bloom awoke, it was not to the smell of dust and cobwebs as one might have imagined—it was instead to a stark white, not entirely unlit, basement; to a sweet, sugary scent that made her go lightheaded at once. She was bound, she quickly noticed, one hand numb, the skin at her wrist sore. 

She didn't know where she was.

What she’d roused to instead of a foul dungeon was a large, near but not completely vacant, room. An ordinary one, but the amount of crime films, thrillers, documentaries, she’d seen was plenty, and what they taught her was, too—plenty enough to know that it was best to first assess her surroundings, even if, through the looking glass, things looked all but uninteresting. Try to pick up on clues as to her location. Look for means of escape, should the opportunity come to present itself. As such, she looked about and around herself for things of the sort. Indications. Things she might have recalled, recognized, even if only vaguely, even if only slightly.

Alas, there was nothing. Not the merest hint. No ambiguously familiar old-fashioned floral paper adorning the walls, no boxes with an address, or perhaps a name, on them, no washing machine of a particular make. There was nothing. There was only the radiator she was cuffed to, cold as ice against her sunburnt skin, the radiator’s agonizing hum buzzing in her ears, a lounge against the wall opposite her and a staircase worn with age. 

“The penny hasn’t dropped yet?” A voice interrupted her quiet reflections, low and soft. 

And then it came flooding back to her: it returned to her in flashing memories, images in vivid colors she would never forget: the blood-red lights she so desperately needed to reach, so close and yet so far, the cement, the tears. They were present again, those tears that glinted silver, balanced at the inner corner of her eye, beckoning a hand towards her, urging her, tempting her to indulge. 

Of course. 

Bloom needed not to see them to know its holder.

In the lightning of this basement, casting shadows on his face that she hadn’t yet taken notice of before, or had furthermore been to careless, too irrational, to see, he looked nothing like him—looked not delicate, pretty, as she’d found him when she took to looking at him for but a quickly fleeting moment without worry, without judgement, behind Amelia and Lauren’s backs. ( _Gut feelings are guardian angels, sweetie_ , her mother told her, once, over coffee and lemon cakes. She should have listened.) Now, he looked like he had been the sort of child who tore the wings off of butterflies not out of sheer curiosity but out of cruelty. Out of the want, the _need_ , to watch it suffer.

“Welcome back.”

His footsteps were quiet as he approached. 

Pale long hair tied together at the neck, framing his face, he stood over her with a tranquil demeanor, and Bloom felt like a doe in headlights, death creeping closer and closer an inch an hour. She tried to think of simpler things, for a moment. Of a hot shower, a warm bed, the voices of the people she loved. Of waking up early, heading to the henhouse, where the chickens would be crying for their breakfast. Bloom was afraid, of course, with nowhere to look but him, his eyes, but she tried to distract herself with idle thoughts. The little things that had hardly mattered, had hardly registered to her before, but made life worth living. The delicious coffee her father used to make. Lauren pinching away at her cheek randomly, “baby face” and soft laughter slipping from her mouth. Her favorite songs, usually from obscure bands, making it big and playing on the radio. The little things she wished he would have left her with, somewhere, perhaps in the woods, half-dead, eyes lidded, so she could pretend that she was at home in lieu of here, pretending that she was in the comfort of her bed. Then she could at least have pretended everything was going to be alright.

Now, not so much. 

Her glassy gaze and the way she looked down at her feet as though defeated fueled the fire in his eyes. “You know, you’re so clumsy.” He said to her, eyes sharp—displeased, almost—but his mouth was curved with amusement. 

His eyes glimmered. It reminded her of the way her father’s cat had looked up at her when she was a puppyish twelve years old, what remained of her little canary out on the rug in the living room, disemboweled. 

“You could’ve seriously hurt yourself, falling the way you did. Can you imagine if you’d died on me, in such an embarrassing, shameful way? I didn’t even push you that hard.”

He hadn’t pushed her that hard, he said—but was it the truth? 

It wasn’t. Perhaps things would have been easier, though, should it have happened the way he relayed it to her, the mocking curve of his mouth daunting, daring. (Daring her to object, to be sure. Daring her to give him a reason to do as he desired.) 

She wondered what he would have done, had she died then and there, blood streaked over the cement. Would he have been filled with disappointment? Would he have bent down slowly to her, skin cooling, having left him so abruptly, without any parting words? Would he have taken a fistful of her hair and dragged her up just like that, pulling and pulling until her scalp came up between his fingers, and would he have been disgusted, because in death she wouldn’t be able to cry, beg, scream for mercy? Or would he have found her even more desirable like that, meek and mild and pliant in ways only a child can be?

Would he have carried her body home, heavier than it would be when alive, and dismembered her right here where she was sitting, curled up? Or would he have been kind to what was left of her, a residue of sorrow, of regrets? 

She didn’t want to think about it. She couldn’t. 

“Say sorry.”

The word resounded over and over again in her ears. Like hate, it was there, lived buried, constant and unwavering, enough to engulf, consume churches and happy homes, stronger than reason. _Sorry_. She frowned, wondered distantly what she would look like begging for his forgiveness, mascara streaking down her face. If she would recognize herself doing something like that, if she would still know those stained cheeks, fluttering eyelids, that small, red-flushed face looking up with hurt and confusion. Too afraid to demand answers. 

Bloom wouldn’t have recognized something, someone, so cowardly.

Yet she bent the way he willed almost immediately, almost without a breath’s time of contemplation. Let him shape her, this, whatever _this_ was, to his sickly desires. She couldn’t get the image of that cat out of her head. She couldn’t shake the notion that she may well have been that poor little bird.

And so she murmured, “I’m sorry,” so quietly one even at walking distance would have to lean in to hear her. Like she might have shattered in thousands of pieces if she’d uttered another word. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so _stupid_.”

Maybe to herself. Maybe to him.

Hesitation, however, hung heavy in the air, from him and her. 

He looked like he didn’t believe her, and rightfully so. Only a madwoman would have denied him, would not have resorted to doing and saying anything and everything in order to appease the person in charge in a situation as this. Still, she’d told him the truth. She had been incredibly foolish, she knew. She’d been foolish to disregard that feeling at the pit of her stomach. More so, she had been foolish to think that there was a god interested in keeping her safe. Foolish to believe that they would come to her aid when all they had been was an instrument to her suffering, to her pain.

She’d never pray again, she knew now, too. She felt her fingers, aching where they were almost numb, being drawn to the crucifix attached to a silver chain wrapped around her neck.  
Her stomach twisted and growled. There was only the dull ache of nostalgia. Those sleepy days she spent eating nothing because the drawers were empty and her father was gone. Two weeks. She’d been lucky the elderly lady who lived next door, Pearline Embers, whose neck juggled when she laughed, came by. She wouldn’t have lived. She wouldn’t have been… _here_. 

“W-What—” Flinching, she blinked, fighting to keep her eyes open, and then suddenly went quiet once more. 

Burden leapt in her throat. The sound of her voice had come a little too loud in comparison to the soft low of his. That bit too harsh. It wasn’t her. (It was her dad—not the one she was born to. Never him. It was the sharpness of a blunt knife, the marks of his belt on her mother’s back.) 

Softer, gentler, then, her voice hoarse: “Where did you take me? Why? Why are you doing this to me? I don’t… I don’t deserve this. I’ve never hurt anyone… not even a fly. I swear, I—”

Before she could finish her inquiries, he shrugged like the response was a given, tilting his head. That damn cat, again. “You look cute like this.” The gesture, with the smile ghosting his mouth, could have been almost coy, almost endearing, to an uninformed observer. “So small, so afraid; like a small bunny, a mouse. Doesn’t stand a chance.”

In a whimper, too many words at once sept from her mouth. A plea of sorts, something sweet, something revolting (he’d guessed she would not be above pleading, and he’d been right in believing so). _I need to go home_ , she told him, voice but a shell of what it was at its best, when she was enthusiastic, when she felt comfortable and safe with Lauren and Amelia, singing off-key in an entirely empty diner backroom. 

“My brother, my sister, they’re waiting for me. Neither of them can sleep without a bedtime story,” tumbled from cracked lips, but there was no response.

She didn’t know what she’d expected—was it a sudden flinch, a sudden change of heart that would allow her to run free again? She’d seen his face, but he hadn’t done anything to her yet. He hadn’t hurt her enough for her to even consider running to the pigs with her story. Perhaps that was what she’d hoped for. A glimmer of compassion in those eyes she’d looked into before, relief from the tight grip around her wrists. 

He said nothing. There was no gentle shushing, no quiet words to make her feel at ease, even if that was nearly impossible, here. Only crouched down, undeterred. Brushed her hair out of her face in a gentle, tender fashion that made her heart ache.

He brushed a thumb along her cheekbone, over the slight blood that’d formed along her hairline, dried and matted by now. She didn’t want to look, but she was too afraid to look away. “You knew all along. This… this whole time? This whole time, you’ve been thinking about—about doing this to me. Hurting me. From the first time you came in?”

The smile on his face grew. Inviting, exciting, warm. (A smile any woman would’ve fallen in love with, if he wasn't him, just like that. At very first sight.) 

“It was like waiting for fruit to ripen,” he mused. “Like waiting for flowers to bloom. There’s a time in which a person is at their best; at their most vulnerable.”

For a moment she turned his words over in her head and reflected on them carefully. And she understood, then, why he chose her over Lauren and Amelia. They were much more lovely but they were much too loud, too strong, too. Those with the quiet voices, confused eyes, were the ideal ones. Bloom, everyone's friend, who only froze when the men in the diner let their hands wander down her back, was among them. Bloom, the only one whose parents didn’t come out to pick her up after school. Bloom, the one who’d have done anything to be loved.

“I thought you were sweet. I-I did. Was curious about you. We could have… could have… become friends, or something. But…” she whispered like a small-town secret, as though ashamed. 

“People are terrible,” he finished for her, though his words weren’t the ones she was going to say. “That’s sweet. Maybe in another life.”

They could have been, she thought. _Genuinely_ thought of it. Her attention was something of a brooch, held tight to her heart, given to a select few, but maybe, maybe, he could’ve been among that handful. He liked reading. He’d been kind to her, too. (Kinder than life had been.) Had he asked her, before, had he spoken to her, asked her what she was into—upon which she’d most likely have answered picking mushrooms and knitting and taking care of her siblings and stray animals, then would have asked for his own interests in turn, as polite as prettily flushed—then they could have been something other than this. This cruel, immoral thing she knew not how to name. 

The soft click of a knife startled her out of her thoughts. 

The knife in his right hand crept slow but steady up her thigh, manner akin to the way a spider might crawl towards its prey in its web of silk, fingers to his left groping blindly, eyes never wavering from hers. As though unable to tell the way her entire body was rigid, tense, under the touch, they sought the edge of her shirt, slipping under the thin, white fabric and smoothening the skin, the baby-soft, barely-there hairs underneath. 

Before she could stammer out something far from compliance, nor anything like protest, he pressed down with it, enough to draw blood, enough to make her sun-tan thighs go red. The contrast of it was like a miracle. Sick with disgust, or some distant, different cousin of it, Bloom cried pearlescent tears. Actually cried. Cried the same way she did when she watched Bambi at eight years past the day of her birth and the poor doe’s mama was shot in the snow, a hunter's pride. Cried because it was unfair. Cried because life was so cruel. Squeezed her eyes shut and cried until her shoulders shook. Until the knife was bone-deep, almost, in her flesh, pooling beneath her thighs in a dreamscape of red. 

After he pulled away, let the knife fall onto the floor with a clang that startled her, he circled the wound only teasingly, never dipping in, tasting the blood of the Lamb, engulfing itself in her heat.

And then he did. Found the wound with a finger and slipped it in, fitting perfectly, made for him, and pressed, pressed, until her whimpers began to fade into screaming, eyes wide and blood-shot. The sound echoed in the silence, broken by little words spilling so quickly from her mouth that she could hardly understand them, herself. 

“You want me to let you go?” He asked and squeezed her through her bra with the hand that wasn't fingering the wound, now, skin cold as the wind by a winter’s night. 

Shivering, squirming, Bloom opened her mouth to tell him, beg him to stop doing something like that, but then felt it creeping up her throat. It twisted her stomach in knots she’d never felt before. She thought for a quick moment that she was going to vomit, that she was about to serve to him the two-too many stolen sweets she’d selfishly taken for herself yesterday. Two days ago, maybe, the quiet noise of her stomach and the ache of it suggested. She would not have been able tell. (There were no windows that indicated what time of day it might have been. She’d looked for them, then for a clock, but to no avail.)

Instead of bile, however, as she swallowed down, she tasted something heavy, something savory. It trickled down her chin and onto the clean, pristine white of her shirt. 

“You think that’s a good idea? You’re not going to forgive me for this. You never will."

The words hadn’t wholly left his mouth or she began shaking her head in objection to his statement, whining, high, fluttery sounds that even in her desperation did not lose their sweet—tried to tell him that she would, she _would_ , said she would not tell a soul until her dying day, until her body laid on the bed of her death. Swore by it on her mother’s grave. And had he chosen to release her then, she would have kept her word. She would not have told. It was true. 

(She would’ve gone home on her yard sale sneakers and in her blood-stained shirt and embraced her little brother and sister so close it might have seemed to them she was instead attempting to crush them to death. Would have taken them to their little rooms and drawn with them, pictures of dogs. Funny looking things with too-big tails and crooked eyes. Always dogs.)

Harsh and quick, his hand came down across her cheek. He’d slapped her and she choked on a sob, thought briefly about the loose little baby tooth she had at that side of her face. She only fell silent when with deft fingers he grabbed her chin and drew closer, close enough to make it feel like they were the only two people in the world, close enough for her to feel his breath on her lips, against the birthmark on the bottom one and the curve of her cupid’s bow—so close she thought for a moment he was going to kiss her. 

“You’re really trying my patience, you know?” Almost kindly. Even with a gaping wound at her thigh, with her heart hammering in her throat, almost tempting. “Stop squirming like that—you’re not all that scared. Look at how red your face is, right now.”

Nothing came in return from Bloom, afraid to say the wrong thing. Only a kitten-weak tug at the cuffs, a sickly-sweet little laugh from his lips because of it.

“You must be hungry,” he broke the silence, an inviting lilt to his voice. “Do you want something to eat? Do you think you deserve it?”

Her wits told her not to accept any of his offerings, but her body deceived her as though it meant nothing—she was hungry. By God, she was hungry. He, too, could feel that she first hesitated. The only movement for a short while was the frightening widening of his grin. Like she had done something amusing. But that wasn't it, she thought to herself when she saw that smile. She wondered if knowing that she could only eat what he brought to her made the hairs at the back of his neck stand on end. If it was knowing that she would starve to death if he didn't that made him wounded.

"I'm hungry," she admitted ultimately, half-wet face serene as if accepting some kind of peace in death, should he now choose to poison the food he was offering her. " _Please_. I won’t scream anymore. I promise, I’ll be good. I’ll behave, I—”

“Okay,” was all he said to her. Tapped his foot once, twice. “Good.”

So, he turned and disappeared for a moment—one too short for her to do anything of consequence. Of value. The only thing she was able to concentrate on was the blade trembling on the ground, a few footsteps away from her, wet with her blood. On the way he had ruined her so quickly, a fresh as a daisy girl—on the way she'd never be a romance novel girl again. 

When he appeared again it was with something in his slender hands. A small cup. She looked at the object with a shimmer in her eyes, curious, and he saw it, she could tell; he noted, even, the way her tongue peeked out of her mouth. 

"I won't take off your cuffs. You do understand that, don't you? You’re a smart girl, aren't you?" More statement than inquiry, he spoke, crouched down before her. With his fingers quickly dipping into the bowl, picking up something out of it, she could finally tell what he was offering her. His eyes frolicked about her face, eager to determine a reaction—Bloom could feel her breath hitch in her throat.

Red-pink raw meat. 

Little, neatly cut, chunks of red-rose raw meat. Which kind of meat she was not able to tell immediately.

He molded a bowl out of one of his hands and filled it with some bits of flesh, holding it out for her, then, expectantly. Bloom foresaw that this was all he would give to her—nothing less, nothing more. Ever, maybe. She guessed that he was not willing to offer her anything other than this. Guessed that it would be compliance or hunger. Death, if fate would handle her as it usually did.

It was just under three seconds too long, Bloom's unwavering, unsettled gaze at the piece of meat, doused in its own blood. With dissatisfaction he clicked his tongue, already turning his body away from her, but she broke. 

“W-wait! I’ll eat it, I’ll eat it!” she promised in no uncertain language, and he nodded, once. Like he did not really believe her, but wanted to see her try nevertheless. A gesture. _Go on_.

One more time he held out his hand to her, but several hairs separated from her mouth, and this time she did not hesitate. She tried not to think about the stench, about the blood of the meat, about her blood that was still on his hands. All became silent the moment she opened her mouth--as though the rest of the world vanished. All that remained was her, feeding from his hand like a small animal, his eyes searching and probing away at her face, focusing on her mouth, on the blood with which his hands dirtied her face, the sound of the tough flesh between her teeth. 

Nothing was there but that and the silence for Bloom—so much so she didn't even realize when he received a phone call, and took it right there. The phone—a small, old-person-phone looking thing—pressed to his ear, he spoke and talked and answered but his attention was never, not for a moment, with the person on the other end of the line. He was chatting distractedly, his eyes not leaving her. As she ate, she could feel them on her. 

“No, I’m not back yet,” she could hear him say to whomever he was talking to.

It was peculiar to hear him converse like this—to hear him lie to them, keep secrets from them. It was peculiar to think that like any other person, like her, he may well have had friends, parents, sisters, brothers—perhaps a very special someone awaiting his homecoming. She wondered if they knew about her, about his pursuits, escapades, or if it was a little secret of his. A little secret between the two them, just for them. 

Maybe she was something that he could indulge in, something that he could do whatever he wanted to, because that particular someone was just that little bit too precious to him. Because he loved them and didn't want to, couldn't, bring them any harm. If perhaps he therefore sought relief in girls like her. 

“Okay. I just have to take care of something. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” 

The last little chunk of meat in her mouth now, muscles and tendons snapped between her teeth. 

When she felt his fingers gentle on her head, running through her hair, she raised her gaze, looked up at him, and almost— _almost_ —relaxed into the touch, arched into it, the faint smile on his lips barely warm, barely reassuring, but there. _There_. In any other circumstance, this—the way he was eyeing her, wiping away the chunks of flesh and holding it out for her to eat; the slight stirring at the pit of her stomach, blood-red hue at her cheeks—could have been romantic. Electrifying and clandestine, like a schoolyard crush you can’t pull your gaze from.

Like waiting to find out if they’d circle yes or no on the crumpled paper one of your friends had slipped one of theirs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter two. i got this done in about nine hours i should instead have spent studying, but oh well.  
> listened to tyler the creator while writing this (specifically, pigs) so if this is weird... he is to blame. (also: religion by lana del rey.)  
> i hope this entertained you to some extent, and as always, thank you for reading!


	3. the holy making of a sinner

Time was a worthless thing, now. Seconds and hours and minutes were meaningless. Existed only to haunt. Bloom wished she could tell where the beginning of that deep darkness was, but she couldn’t seem to find it.

After he had tended to the wound on her thigh and then with a few words left her behind, went agonizingly slowly up the stairs and locked the door behind him in the same manner someone would have done with a crate full of misfortune, the night—or the longing for it, the sense that it was close by, heavy eyelids and all—came quickly. 

Marred by dried tears and blood, Bloom sat slumped against the radiator, struggling against the awful silence, the only companion she had left; a sole tranquil comrade. Similar to the dust that settled after disaster. Serene and silent and intended only for survivors. A shaky breath taken between shouts. The sweet cooing of birds as the dead laid in the dirt, soil for a blanket and insects as bunkmates.  
Like this, she could only think of him. 

In attempt not to slip under, under the surface of sleep, she wondered if he was going to return to his nest now, crawl so carefully into bed that his bed would not dip under the weight of his body, eyes gleaming like an owl's; so terribly carefully that he wouldn't disturb her—him—them in their slumber. Wanted to know if he brushed his lithe fingers through the angel hair on their heads and whispered like it had become a mantra in their house: _I love you, I love you, I love you_. 

Imagined being a little critter and sitting by the window, an unsolicited voyeur, watching his mouth curve into a smile that she could only see him wearing whilst dragging a dead body through the woods, by the hair. She could see him crawling over them in her mind, closing his mouth over theirs, could see him moving, sucking, licking, drinking the pained, pleasured sounds from their silk-soft lips like blood. 

Playing like cubs, play-eating their throat, pinning them down, tasting them. Body moving in a way even an untouched, touch-starved deity needed not to read about to know.

“Look at me,” she could nearly hear him in her mind, more serious than before, demanding attention, obedience. She’d never felt quite so small and unimportant as she did then; never once had she felt quite so much like her mother, with no words, no defense, even with the marks of her husband’s hands burning under layer after layer of foundation. 

(The sound of his voice was like the strings of a violin. The bite of those strings against her fingers, his hand on her cheek, a kiss to her ears.)

A strange concept, that, the love he must have felt for them. One that sometimes would wake her up and keep her up, sitting straight between the plush pillows and stuffed animals atop her bed, wing-tipped eyes on the ceiling and butterflies with broken, dusty wings flitting about in her belly. It was a concept she struggled to picture herself in. A concept she’d never known.

Love could be a lot like melancholy, she’d heard Amelia say once, voice stemmy, thorny. Painful.

For her, it was, Bloom knew. Years ago, back when she used to kiss on cardboard cut-outs of male movie stars to convince her parents she was like her brothers and sisters, normal, Amelia fell heartbreakingly quickly in love with Lauren. She fell heartbreakingly deep and quick until nothing remained of the world as she knew it before. Everything was Lauren, after. She was the reason Amelia took the job at Moe’s at all. Maybe not intentionally, maybe not consciously, but with every fiber of her being, with every clandestine inch of her aching, throbbing heart, yes, it’d been Lauren. It’d been Lauren, with her dark-as-night skin and sweetheart pout and spicy oil scent that went wheresoever she did. 

Love could be dangerous, too. 

(Dangerous like religion. One day, maybe, she’d find a new church, too, it vaguely crossed her mind. Maybe she’d find it, religion, in the bump of someone’s nose, the mole right under their right eye. In the warmth between neck and shoulder, where her face would fit like a puzzle piece.)

Dangerous, Amelia said it could be. When she noticed Lauren starting to fill out her shirts and jeans in unsettling ways, when she began to speak of her bones aching in warning of her body lengthening. When her darling best friend, girl-friend, never girlfriend, began taking up an interest in the very same boys whose advances she’d rolled her eyes at before, waved away with a dismissive hand. When Lauren began plucking the petals of flowers on a park bench, loves me, loves me not, unsure if her feelings for this one curly-haired fellow would ever be returned, while Amelia sat next to her, moon-struck. 

But most of all? Most of all, Amelia whispered through the tears that day, love could be deadly.

And that it might have been. Bloom doubted it, but not for long, for deadly was what it would feel like in the night as she wondered if she would ever be so fortunate to be able to fall asleep well and quickly. Fall asleep knowing that no one in this world was as loved as her.

Love was an obsession. A nauseating, beautiful, hideous obsession.

The three things most people were obsessed with in life all were. One, love. Then there was beauty. And then, death. The latter, separately, and even more so together. 

Beauty in death. 

She’d not yet thought about it. About how her relatives would handle being without her, whether they would have her cremated, if fate chose to be unfriendly; if her body were to be discovered somewhere, in a ditch or an alley, or drifting, bloated, in a lake, by an unlucky hiker or else a group of terrified schoolgirls. If she would have an open coffin and her mother would kiss her on the forehead one last time, then on her closed eyelids, or if perhaps the poor, frail woman would faint instead, mouth open, eyes wide in a scream forced right back into her body, before she would even reach the side of the coffin.

When she was still a little younger—shortly after reading an article in the newspaper, one full of troublesome terms she barely understood, others she had to search up on the old computer which she was allowed to use only with supervision—she told her father that later, someday, when she would come to pass, she longed to be useful. That she longed to help where she could. Her daddy didn't wholly understand her. He only did so when she brought the cut-out article and presented it to him on the kitchen table between the carrots and potatoes. At first he furrowed his brows, angry to be reminded of the transience of his little girl, the inevitable wilting of the flower, but the frown made place quickly for a smile. He found it virtuous, he told her the same evening. A small, modest, attainable wish a parent could be proud of.

( _But not, never, proud enough to make him stay_ , a daunting voice at the back of her head urged. _Not proud enough, I bet, to make him look for you. To make him find you before, before_ …)

“I wanna die,” she breathed out, words coming out in a whimper and the silence in the room drowning them right away like they hadn’t left her lips to begin with. 

The voice had been honest with her, so being true in return was the least she could do. 

And as if these were the magic words, she could hear a door open, footsteps coming down the stairs. Her eyes ached with the sudden, fair light falling in, illuminating the room, but she could not close them—stubborn, they remained glued to where she knew he would come to stand.

And there he stood. The poacher. The executioner.

He’d cut his hair, Bloom noticed first. Neck-length. Almost a mullet, if the bleach-white front hadn’t been so long. His face looked sharper like this. Less soft, more crisp corners, deep shadows underneath. He looked older, like this. More like someone capable of doing bad things.

“You’re awake?” 

No response. 

Was he blind, now? Had he gone blind overnight? Was that his price to pay for this? 

“Come, now.” He shushed, ever so gentle, like he'd heard her thoughts. “Don’t sulk, pretty little thing.”

“You know what? I’m going to take off those cuffs, now. You'll behave, right?” 

A proposition. An eye for an eye. A favor that required something in return, as favors so often did.

A favor she could not deny. 

Bloom nodded. 

And so he did. With expert fingers he made quick work of binding her hands using a rope, then made a strong knot in order to keep them tightly together. She looked on silently while lightly frowning over how taut he’d wrapped it round her wrists, more snug than the handcuffs, but she did not resist. With what little energy she had left in her body, attempting to fight him off would have been fruitless. Or, well, _foolish_. 

“Not sulking,” she murmured, looking down at her hands, mouth frowny.

“You look like you’re sulking, though, angel,” and he smiled through it, a grin hooked at the edges of his mouth. Sweet, but something else, too. The smile wasn’t all sincere. “Are you going to pretend you didn’t seek me out that night? Didn’t come to me, red in the face? It was so cute. It was so dumb. I wondered if, on some level, you could sense what I was capable of.”

She gave him no response. 

He’d noticed before that her face gained more color when she was uncertain. When she was unnerved. The apples of her cheeks beamed an almost bright-red when she looked up at him anew this time, asking, “Do they know?”

Bewilderment, or simply surprise, unraveled about his face. 

“What?”

“Your… person. On the phone yesterday. You were talking to someone. Significant other, right?”

The edge of his mouth rose and it sufficed to have her thrumming in her skin, pulling against the rope around her wrists with all the strength a feral boar might possess. To no avail. (But ropeburn, immediately. Pretty, he would tell her once. Later.)

She tried again. 

“Do they know about this? About me?”

“Who’s told you that that was my significant other?”

She thought of a cat that settled down at the window and waited for its owner to return. Waited, waited, and pined. She wondered if that was what they were like. She believed not. She or he must have had his or her own life, free from this frightening, wild creature that changed skin as if it were a pair of socks. 

Changing colors, shedding skins. It could not have felt natural to him. It did not to her. She wondered if at the end of the day he still knew which layer of ever so many was the true version of him.

Bloom blinked. “I assumed it was. Thought about it. Did you—did you sleep with them tonight?”

She’d let it slip before she could swallow it down. She’d been curious, she was. Curious about matters that felt like faraway kingdoms and their delicacies.

Silence stretched on between them and his gaze, steady on her, felt like a noose that was getting tighter and tighter as time went by, as flowers bloomed and wilted and stories were written. Bloom was quick to grovel, heart beating hard in her chest. 

(However long ago it had been, she hadn't forgotten when Amelia told her that she had a talent for easing harsh deaths, pain. Her only hope was that she still harbored that gift.)

“I thought about it when I—when it was dark, here. I couldn’t help it.”

He started talking over her. “Did _you_ sleep with him?” He settled down, on his knees, just beside where she was sitting, and put his finger down in that same warm space where they felt so at home the other day, ignoring her when she asked him to stop, to please stop. He spread the wound apart like curtains of satin, fine red staining them, staining her. “Would you’ve let him touch you there? _Here_?”

Perhaps it was the dull ache making a hazy mess of her brain, but she was not sure what he was referring to—whom he was talking about, for Christ's sake. With only a small group of friends, a cautious nature and a heart she did not want to get hurt, she'd never even gotten as far as holding hands with a boy. Even less a girl. When Lauren and Amelia spoke about kissing, about what often but not always was the point of a boy's undeterred pursuit, she tended to blush like a hearth fire was burning under her skin. She had never let anyone lay a hand on her before. Not as he did with such negligence yesterday.

(She'd thought about his fingers there, too, in the dark. About how cold they were. About how they might've felt like candy suckers between her lips.)

“The boy who came to pick you up from time to time. You went on a walk. He looked excited. But I think you looked like you really liked it, too. Being with him. If you can be curious, so can I, no? Am I wrong?”

She knew then. It showed on her face. She couldn't have concealed that flit of realization even if she had longed to do so. Immediately, she knew which boy he had seen her with. And so very much a boy he was. Ginger. Small, a year younger than her, but as kind, as well-mannered, as boys came in their little town. And he’d come to her gushing, sweet-faced and excited, asking if she knew who it was Amelia had grown enamored with. Like a web she spun a story about a boy from a few towns over, who played basket ball and drove an expensive looking truck. Her fabricated little tale was enough for him to pull her in for an embrace unlike any other one she’d gotten, and she remembered feeling bad for lying. 

(And yet in a way she was proud to have done so. It wasn’t her place to reveal something like that. Amelia knew Bloom thought girls were pretty in the same way boys were, too, and she, too, would never have told her mother or her father. Unspoken little secrets were common in towns like theirs. They were commonly tolerated if it meant avoiding any damage to reputation. Such was the way of things.)

“Thomas? Amelia’s brother? Y-you’re talking about Thomas, he’s, he’s—he’s my friend. My friend’s brother. I’ve known him since I was… since I was little. He’s sweet.”

“Yeah?” He watched carefully as her features contorted. “What’s the problem, then? He's not good enough to fuck you?"

“That—he's not—" The tip of the knife—that horrible knife—pressed against the white of her shirt made her breathing stop. It pierced the fabric, but not yet the flesh. Not yet. She could tell he was thinking about it. That he might have been for a long time now, from the moment he came down her. That maybe he was just waiting for a moment in which her mind would slip and the inevitable would come to her unexpectedly.

(As he’d said before. The ideal ones are the vulnerable.)

She sighed. Quiet. Stillness. Calm before the storm.

Then, bordering blasphemous—

“With me,” she whispered. She wanted to understand. She wanted to feel. Even if it was wrong. “Make love with me."

He looked at her, really looked at her, disbelievingly at first, then like she’d made him powerful. 

So softly he allowed his fingers to pass through her hair, a breath’s time after, her scalp coming up between them, that she barely noticed it when he pulled at the ends, raising her gaze, drawing her eyes right into his. He kissed her then, there, her lips sickeningly sweet, pleasantly soft, and he almost felt the yearning to praise her.

Almost. 

He didn’t.

“Show me,” she insisted again. “I need to…”

She knew she couldn’t go back now.

When his hands crawled past her side, down her back, she gave him her silence and room, thighs falling open, wider, sacrilege. A schoolgirl flush bloomed on her cheeks and he licked away the tears, holding her down as she started making faint movements with her hips, against his leg, quicker and quicker like a bitch in heat, grinding and moaning and gasping for him when his fingers dug deep into the expanse of her skin, breaking it, drawing blood. 

When the flesh between his legs, color unlike the rest of him, sensitive, pretty, was exposed to her, he watched as she coughed up a little gob of spit, tracked it as it trickled down her chin and along her neck and laughed with amusement. 

From then a divine kingdom fell so quickly no army of seven nations could have prevented it.

Coiling about her like a snake, draping over her body like a blanket, he ground his hips deep and unrelenting. Rutted against her in a way even she could understand and smiled frighteningly wide when she gasped, startled, at the sudden contact, the sudden breach—at the way she could no longer tell where they were separate people. Where she began, and where he ended. (Perhaps she did not begin. Perhaps he did not end.) She begged and he let her for a little while, watching with arousal pooling at the pit of his stomach as she spit pleas, swallowed prayers. Too pretty a picture. A picture that men would go to war for. Scary.

“Please,” she sobbed, and gently he shushed her, pressed his lips against her collarbone and whispered something soft and sweet there, left it a secret in the fine crease. She felt soft velvet against her neck, his tongue flattening against every inch of skin and lapping more greedily, more hungrily, with every fruitless word that sept from her lips, then the sting of a bite. A teasing nibbling, accompanied by the quickening of his lower half, pressing harder, finding voids never before discovered. “Please. _Please_.”

Without warning then, the knife tore away at the skin underneath, right above her hipbone, and he let his eyes fall shut. _Oh_ , she thought, he the one to moan now, almost girlish, almost divine, in a place with his head where he could not be reached; oh, she thought, when the knot inside of her began to tighten perilously, when he dug, in skin and between the soft flesh amid her legs, deeper and deeper even as she writhed underneath him, squirmed to get away. She cried, shook, the pain, the pleasure, too much for her to take, but there was nowhere for her to run. 

Nowhere for her to wander but the shameful valleys she could see when she, too, closed her eyes. Valleys for banished women, for monsters and false prophets. 

His touch was harsh, harder and harder, rougher, then wild without remorse, and he would not stop, she knew, until that thirst, that hunger, of his, was but a distant memory. Her little heart pounded in time with her head. The knife was buried to the hilt, now. He was buried to the hilt, buried in the sensation of her shudders, her whimpers, crazy and feral and sick with despair, with shame, with the knowledge that she was losing herself.

And she understood. This was making love.

This was what she had thought about. Different, but the same. This was making love, this was a holy making of a sinner.

When Bloom came, embarrassingly quickly, when that ball inside of her rolled, snapped, blew up in her face, she did not do it with Hollywood grandeur, with vulgar language or with lewd expressions on her face. When she came, she nearly wept with wanting, with being wanted.

At once, with pain, with sorrow, with shame.

“Oh God,” she sniffed, crying, sounds of the deaf, blind in her way around this sparking sensation, nothing like the ones she’d elicited from herself with curious, inept little fingers, “ _God_ ”, and it was like she was talking to him—like God was him, the name he was birthed with. 

(She might have been, because was. He _was_.)

She looked away, couldn’t keep looking when pulled up her little skirt further up and his fingers found their way to that golden spot, that spot that made her toes curl, eyes roll back; felt her thighs tremble when he slowed his hips and pressed down hard, right there, rubbing quick harsh circles against the heated, single shade away from stark red pearl hidden there with the flat of his finger. 

She hunched desperately against his finger, his heavy, hard cock, mock-fucking, mouth parted in a silent sob, and that did it, of course—had him slapping her across the face as she tightened around him all over again, hissing about _dirty_ and _cunt_ and _bitch_ and _cum_ ; had him throbbing, shuddering, letting out a pretty, high-pitched moan along with his love heavy inside of her, dousing her in his colors. 

Nothing between them but semen and salt. That blade, too, withdrawing inch by inch. 

He found the void it left with his mouth, traced the pretty little thing and began fucking it open with his tongue, slipping his fingers into it, licking away and savoring the taste. He moaned at the taste of the blood, fresh blood, on his tongue, ground skin between tongue and teeth, and whispered, seriously, “Don’t get greedy like that again. No fun, like that. And fun’s all your good for. Aren't you?” 

Wonderingly, like a small child at a circus, Bloom watched as he crawled up again, face inches from hers, and so beautiful like this, so god damn beautiful. He stayed perfectly still. Only movement was a slight tug at the edge of his mouth when she leaned in for a taste. 

“I’m going to give you something special.” God damn beautiful, even like this, mouth red with her blood, fingers all the same. Beautiful like this, toeing the line between monster and man. “Better than anything else you’ve ever had.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter three of... nine, maybe?  
> next up:  
> bloom has made an offer. this you know. our kind stranger, in turn, will be making his.  
> take a guess, maybe. i'm curious.  
> that being said,  
> thank you for reading! feel free to share your thoughts with me and take care!


End file.
